My Horoscope for Early April....Good News, Bad News...Or Both?

Pisces (February 19 - March 20)

Your April Horoscope by Susan Miller



DGB Editorial:

I don't usually pay too close attention to my horoscope but every once in a while I will get one that i particularly like -- and/or in this case -- one that partly unnerves me. This does both. I like the 'creativity' part; but the 'health and surgery' part scares the life out of me. I've had enough of hospitals for the next long while. A year and a half ago was too short a time ago. No more hospitals please...No bad news from doctors please...I'm in a good 'creativity zone' right now -- and I don't want any setbacks. Let tomorrow -- April 1st/09 bring me good luck, not bad. Hold on, and be good to me my liver, please -- and I will be good to you.

-- dgb, March 31st, 2009.



Pisces Horoscope for April 2009


By Susan Miller



What a pivotal time of the year this month is for you! You still have Mars in Pisces giving you a lovely advantage! Mars first entered your sign on March 15 and will continue to stand by you until April 21. During the first three weeks of April, you must push all your dearest plans and goals forward with all your might, while you have the force of the universe behind you. You won't have any problem getting the attention of key people, so proceed confidently. Having Mars in Pisces will be a huge plus - and this is a once-in-two-year edge that you have for only three more weeks.


It's time to think about yourself, which is a change for you. As a Pisces you are very oriented toward helping others, but now taking extra "me" time will work to your benefit. Everyone should have their own needs met sometimes, so this month, take care of the parts of you that you've neglected, dear Pisces. Also, you will be in a highly creative mode, and you will be turning out impressive work - even surprising yourself with how original you can be.


On the full moon, April 9 (operative April 8 to 13), you are likely to see a financial culmination to a deal, or get the answer to a question about a commission, advance, royalty, or licensing fee. You may need to write a check too, but there's a strong chance that money would be coming in to you, too. This point in the month should be upbeat. The reason for your optimistic outlook is that this particular full moon, April 9, will reach out to Jupiter, planet of good fortune, and Neptune, your ruler and planet of imagination. You may get news of a wonderful career development, and as a result, be told you'll be getting a generous sum of money. To be clear, the focus of this full moon will be on your finances, but your career may be the channel that delivers it to you.


The house so strongly lit is not a house ruling salary but rather one-time cash payments. If you do see cash coming in, it will be money that comes in one large chunk, not cash that is distributed over long-term periods, as would be the case in a paycheck. You may hear good news about a business loan or scholarship, venture capital investment, mortgage, refinancing plan, inheritance, or severance package. If you are starting a job, you may go over your new benefits package that will come with the job. If you feel you are due a refund for taxes, this full moon may bring better-than-expected news.


In terms of health, this same full moon may bring surgery or an important dental procedure to your attention, and actually, it may be scheduled for sometime between April 8 and 13. If so, you have fine aspects to Jupiter, which rules, among other things, healing and vitality. As you see, you'll have an excellent chance of success with this procedure. Jupiter is currently visiting your twelfth house, the area of the chart ruling hospitals, physical therapy, rehab, and other areas that we go to from time to time to get well.


Now let's turn to a wild card part of the month, due on April 15. To understand what's happening, we need to look back to your recent past for a moment. You seem to be frustrated by the slow, overly cautious attitude or response from a partner. This person might be your marriage partner, or someone you collaborate with at work in a close, committed way. In this sense, it could be your business partner, agent, investor, publicist, or other person you depend upon and who is committed to the outcome of the projects that you do together. Yet your frustration appears to be building with this person, for he or she seems not to be "getting" what you need or are trying to do, and as a result you feel held back.


On April 15, you may boil over, when Mars, planet of aggressive action and courage, will align with Uranus, planet of surprise and rebellion. Both planets will meet at 24 degrees of Pisces. As you see, this is as hot an aspect as you can get, and it may make you impulsive, angry, or ready to very rapidly go solo. Count to ten and keep your head. You may feel shocked about something you learn at this time. If you were born on March 14 or within five days of this date, you will feel this aspect more closely than most.


Even though classic astrology books will tell you to calm down on this day, there is a part of me that feels there is something refreshing about an honest response. If you want to proclaim, "Enough is enough!" be my guest. Whatever it is, you seem to be a bit unnerved by what you hear, doubly so if you were born on March 14, plus or minus five days. Keep your schedule light so you can more easily deal with what comes up, because it will be hard to concentrate on anything else near April 15.

Timelines on Freud's Changing Theories About The Human Personality

A 'Loose' Chronological Organization of Freud's Different Psychoanalytic Theories


Freud never created a theory in which he was not provocatively controversial in some way or another, and in this regard his later 1915-1920 Life vs. Death Instinct and 'Superego vs. Id with the Ego Mediating' Theory would be no different than any one of his earlier theories in earlier parts of his career.

Let's loosely organize Freud's different theories as follows with me looking up the more precise dates by tomorrow morning:

1. The Beginning of Freud's Theory of The Unconscious and 'The Return of the Repressed' under the influence of 'the talking cure -- chimney sweeping -- and auto-hypnosis' (Anna O, Breuer's patient from 1881, and the 'first' psychoanalytic patient), 1885 Freud studied with Charcot in Paris and learned more about hypnosis and both the common if not always 'traumatic' and 'sexual' etiologies of hysteria combined with the 'unconscious repression' etiology and the idea of 'emotional abreaction' and 'catharsis' in conjunction with the recall of the unconscious, repressed memory under hypnotic suggestion, 'the pressure technique', and/or 'free association' to stimulate the 'removal of the hysterical symptom' associated with the unconscious, repressed memory -- these clinical events and theoretical developments would trigger Freud and Breuer to write a book together describing all these events, and The Birth of 'Psycho-analysis', 1895, Studies in Hysteria.

2. Freud's Seduction Theory (1896, The Aetiology of Hysteria, theorizing for the
first time about the impact of 'adults seducing and sexually abusing children);

3. Freud's Abandonment or Partial Abandonment of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory1896-1899 and towards a more 'sexual wish fulfillment fantasy' view of childhood memories and the human psyche anticipating the various theories that would follow this development.

4. Freud's Screen Memory Theory (1899, 'Screen Memories', Freud speculated that 'conscious' memories can and/or do allude to deeper, darker, 'repressed, unconcious memories interwoven with symbolic wishful fantasies'. This theory paved the way for his classic 'Interpretation of Dreams');

5. Freud's Dream Interpretation Theory (1900, 'The Interpretation of Dreams');

6. Freud's Theories of 'Childhood Sexuality' and 'The Oedipal Complex' (1905, 'Three Essays on Sexuality');

7. Freud's Changing Ideas about Transference, first introduced in 1895, in the book, 'Studies in Hysteria, now years later, after the 'failure' of the 'Dora' case, which he wrote about in his 1905 essay, 'Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria', Freud much more clearly articulated and elaborated on the clinical phenomenon and Freudian concept of 'transference' in his 1912 essay, 'The Dynamics of The Transference');

8. Freud's First Fully Articulated Theory of Narcissism (1914, On Narcissism);

9. Freud's 'Life and Death Instinct' Theory (1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle)

10. Freud's famous 'Hegelian Triumvarate': 'The Id' (Thesis), 'The Superego'(Moral Anti-thesis), and 'The Ego' (Mediating and Synthesizing Agent in The Personality)' -- Strachey's translations -- first discussed in 1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle, later more specifically discussed, 1923, in 'The Ego and The Id').

11. One of Freud's last essays, 1940, 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence', written in 1938, published in 1940 after his death, anticipates and foreshadows the birth and evolution of 'Object Relations' -- a different 'revolution' in Psychoanalysis, jumped on by Melanie Klein, and further developed by Freudian and post-Freudian theorists such as: Ronald Fairbairn, D.W. Winnicott, Harry Guntrip, and others, leading to the 'Self Psychology' of Heinz Kohut and others...

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DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- in addition to integrating elements of Freudian and Jungian Psychological Theory and others mentioned elsewhere -- also aims to build a philosphical and psychological dialectical bridge over the abyss of Freud's early Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his later theories including the issues of Screen Memories, Dream Interpretation, Infantile and Childhood Sexuality, The Oedipal Complex, Narcissism, Transference Theory, The Repetition Compulsion, The Life and Death Instincts, The Superego, Ego, and Id, and The Splitting of The Ego.

More to come soon...on the DGB development and evolution of this important subject matter.

-- dgb, March 25th, modified and updated, March 31st, 2009.

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DGB Reflections On the 100th Anniversary of Freud and Jung Meeting For The First Time on Mar. 3rd, 1907: Updated and Modified, March 31st, 2009

Introduction

This essay has undergone numerous revisions. Today I will focus on the elements of both Freudian Psychoanalysis and Jungian Psychology that have influenced the development and evolution of DGB Psychology -- and particularly my latest integrative model of the personality that borrows significantly from both Freud and Jung.

-- dgb, March 31st, 2009.



Part 1: Sunday, March 3rd, 1907, Freud and Jung Meet For The First Time -- And Talk For 13 Hours Straight!


Freud and Jung -- theirs was an all too short and tumultous seven year relationship (1907-1914), passionate and explosive, reverent from each side at the beginning, much more rebellious from Jung's side as things progressed, often compared to a common father/son type relationship with Freud maintaining his authoritative paternal boundaries and Jung challenging these same boundaries -- eventually to the point of separation, and the building of two separate schools of psychology with partly siimilar, partly different philosophies and conceptualizations concerning human psychology.

Freud and Jung both shared a partly Hegelian, partly Nietzschean philosophy. Freud was more a product of the Enlightenment, Jung a product of Romantic Philosophy. Jung seemed a little more willing to integrate the 'darker side' of human nature in a productive manner with the rest of man's personality, whereas Freud seemed more about 'rationally analyzing' this same dark side with the goal 'of bringing it under more rational, conscious, enlightened control -- but control none the less. Jung was willing to give up more of this control with a trust things would eventually integrate in a more healthy direction.

This was one of the main dialectical splits or differences in opinion between Enlightenment and Romantic Philosophy -- just how much reason was man willing to give up and trust that man would still land back on firm ground again -- after some kind of a 'romantic flight' to who knows where.

Jung was more the mythologist, mystic, astrology, occult and para-normal psychologist. Freud didn't seem too comfortable following Jung into these areas. It just happens to be my birthday today -- Jung might be more apt to make a psychological interpretation in this regard, as I try to mediate between Freud and Jung, although I am just speculating here. Besides, if he wouldn't I will.

March 3rd. My birthday. I am a pisces -- often equated with 'two fish swimming towards each other and away from each other at the same time'(or not knowing which way to swim while wanting to swim both ways at the same time). Towards intimacy and committment. And/or away from intimacy and committment and towards more 'individual freedom and self-expression'.

How appropriate that Freud and Jung should meet together for the first time on this 'dualistic-dialectic, thesis-anti-thesis' day. Two very strong-willed and creative men each doing their absolutely very best to 'will to power' their own separate vision and creation while admiring, respecting and learning from each other at the same time.

Or at least in the beginning. Until their respective creative visions came into conflict with each other -- and this conflict became stronger and stronger, reaching more and more of an impasse that just would not go away. And then the anger and resentment started to seriously set in and put a fast ending to what had started out as such a strong and passionate relationship with Freud wanting to pass the leadership of his 'Psychoanalytic Torch' onto to Jung, his heir-in-waiting.

But it was not to be. Psychoanalysis -- at least as Freud defined and described it --was just too tight a 'theoretical box' for Jung to accept and live with. Jung needed a significantly different theoretical box that he could create himself, accept because it was his own Romantic-Mystical-Mythological Vision; not Freud's 'Pseudo-Scientific-More-Rational-Enlightenment Vision' -- that just did not work for Jung.


One of the dividing issues between Freud and Jung was Freud's often stated 'pre-occupation with sexuality' or 'pansexuality'.

Jung wanted to define 'libido' as 'life energy'; not just 'sexual energy'. Freud would have nothing to do with this. For Freud, 'life energy' at this point in his career was to be equated with 'sexual energy'; nothing more, nothing less. His message to Jung was basically this: If you don't want to follow the instructions of the Creator of Psychoanalysis here, then leave. Jung did indeed leave -- like Adler before him and like quite a few psychoanalysts after him who just could not find enough 'theoretical and/or clinical harmony' with Freud.

The irony here is that after Jung left -- probably mainly because of the 'libido' controversy -- Freud would create a 'life instinct' years later that included but did not only include man's 'sexual instinct'. Maybe Freud was listening to Jung after all, or more likely, Freud had to deal with two new clinical issues that weren't being properly explained by his old model. Specifically, there was the phenomenon of World War 1 soldiers coming back from the war and 'repeating their war traumacies' in the psychotherapy room. This 'repeating of horrible experiences' didn't seem to adhere to either Freud's ideas of 'the pleasure principle' or to Freud's principle of 'wish-fulfillment'. This clinical phenomenon needed a better theoretical explanation. So too did the clinical phenomenon of 'masochism' -- specifically, the type of masochism that Freud labelled as 'Primary Masochism'. Again this clinical phenomenon, didn't seem to follow the rules of either the Pleasure Principle or The Wish-Fulfillment Principle. Again, a new explanation was needed.

In this regard, Freud thought long and hard about introducing the concept of 'the mastery compulsion' but ultimately rejected it -- perhaps because it was too close to Adler's idea of 'superiority striving'. It is too bad that Freud ultimately rejected this concept of the mastery compulsion because it would have fit in nicely with his ideas (and/or maybe I am projecting my more Adlerian based ideas onto Freud here) about the nature and dynamics of transference.

However, Freud chose to go another theoretical direction by introducing the 'life' vs. 'death instinct' ('instinct' also often being translated as 'drive' or 'impulse' -- depending on the particular translation and/or interpretation).

But by the time Freud got to a 'life drive' that seems to more closely reflect Jung's definition of 'libido' than Freud's earlier 'sexual' definition, Freud and Jung were many too mornings and many too many theoretical miles apart from a place they could ever return.

But not for DGB Philosophy-Psychology which prides itself (myself) for my ability to integrate practically any two theorists. I am sure there are other psychologists and psycho-theorists who have tried and/or successfully integrated Freud and Jung in some sort of integrative fashion.

Call my latest work in personality theory another attempt at doing this -- integrating Freudian and Jungian Theory (as well as also integrating elements of Adler, Klein, Fairbairn, Fromm, Kohut, Berne, Perls, Masson and others as well).

Too many attempted integrations here? Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see.

Let's see where it takes us.

One of the ideas that Jung incorporated into his own system that wasn't in Freud's was the idea of 'The Collective Unconscious'. Here Jung showed his interest in, and influence from, mythology. Freud had an interest in mythology as well -- witness his incorporation of 'The Oedipal Complex' which is taken from a Sophocles mythological trilogy. But Freud wasn't as keenly interested in myths -- or probably as sophisticated in them -- as Jung would become. Nor did Freud have any ambition to explore the world of the occult and par-psychology and astrology -- like Jung did.

Mythology would become a centre-piece of Jung's fast evolving Personality Theory.

The idea of 'Archetypes' arose from this area. Archetypes are basically Gods and Heroes and Villains from mythology that have been 'introjected' or 'internalized' into man's Collective Unconscious. They can be 'acted out' through 'the Personna' (the dominant conscious part and style of the personality by which a person interacts with other people) or they can be acted out in 'the Shadow' -- a more 'Id-like' part of the personality that is disowned, suppressed, repressed, kept 'secret', and kept in a 'darker corner' of the personality.

The Shadow can be projected out into the world in the form of a 'lover', a 'hated person', a 'hero' or 'idol', a 'villain'...and so on...

In Gestalt language, the Personna is the 'figurall' part of the personality; the Shadow is the 'background' part of the personality that 'pops up seemingly out of nowhere -- 'seemingly nowhere' being the 'home of The Shadow' -- much to our often personal embarrassment and/or chagrin -- or to that of someone in our social environment who witnesses it.

One of the goals of Jungian Psychotherapy is to help the client achieve a better integration/synthesis between the Personna (the dominant, active social side of the personality and The Shadow (the part of the personality buried deep in the Unconscious that strives to actively 'compensate' for the limitations and weaknesses of The Personna.

This has some similarities, some differences, with Freud's desire in Psychoanalysis to help a client's 'Superego' and 'Id' get along more harmoniously through the mediating, 'compromise-formation' negotiating and integrating skills of the 'Ego' other than in a completely 'neurotic' and/or 'psychotic' 'conflict-resolution that socially is just not working.

In past essays, I have compared Freud's conception of The Superego vs. The Id as being very similar to Nietzsche's earlier conception of Apollo vs. Dionysus. What Jung's model allows for that Freuds' model really doesn't is the possibility than in any one particular case a person's 'Dionysus Archetype-Figure' could dominate his or her particular Personna whereas it could be Apollo that is buried in the person's Unconscious Shadow.

Nietzsche himself was seemingly like this -- or believed that he was.

After 'disowning' himself from the 'Hegelian Dialectic' and from his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- Nietzsche basically 'abandoned' and/or 'suppressed' and/or denied his 'own Apollo' -- religating it to the Shadow of his Mythological and/or Personal Unconscious -- while 'Dionysus' went 'hogwild' in his conscious personality, taking over his Personna, and possibly having something to do with Nietzsche's ultimate self-destruciton (or not). Nietzsche's 'insanity' between 1890 and 1900 is still a subject of academic debate. I think if I remember properly, Nietzsche's father was also cursed with some form of mental disorder and/or psychosis (schizophrenia) so we may be talking about some sort of genetic disorder on Nietzsche's father's side that may have had nothing to do with Nietzsche's evolving 'Dionysian philosophy and lifestyle'. So Nietzshe's eventual self-destruction over the last 10 years of his life may have been genetic, not learned. Or it may have been both. Subject for further debate.

Anyways, to conclude this essay today, I will simply say that my 'bottom 3 floors (unconscious or subconscious levels) of the personality are influenced by both Freud and Jung as well as Adler and Perls.


A DGB Integrative Model of Unconscious (Subconscious) Elements in The Personality


1. The Top 'Personal Memory' Basement(Unconscious)Floor of The Personality: The Freudian-Adlerian-Gestalt realm of personal memories, transference templates, transference complexes, transference dynamics, including introjections and internalized projections, potential associations, displacements, sublimations, compensations, and more...

2. The Middle 'Mythological' Basement (Unconscious) Floor of The Personality: Full of myths, symbolism, archetypes or archetype-figures -- Gods, Idols, Heroes, Villains, Anti-Gods, etc...

3. The Genetic, Biological and Psychological Potential Self (The 'Soul' of The Personality): Full of talents, capabilities, potentials, biological and psychological impulses towards self-assertion and self-empowerment which can take either a 'healthy' and/or 'pathological' direction depending on the other influences going on within the personality, good and/or bad.


That is enough for today concerning Freud and Jung.

-- dgb, March 31st, 2009.


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DGB Philosophy vs. Nietzsche's Philosophical Evolution...Re-Modified and Updated...May 11/09...

Part 1: A Brief Introduction To Nietzsche's Philosophical Evolution

A philosopher-writer who takes it upon himself -- or herself -- to interpret a famous philosopher like Nietzsche is at least partly stuck between a rock and a hard place, especially if the intended reading audience is meant to be broader than a strictly professional academic audience. The question becomes how to simplify Nietzsche in as orderly a fashion as possible without oversimplifying him.

This task is made all the more difficult due to the fact that Nietzsche didn't want his philosophy to be pigeon-holed, stereotyped and/or classified -- and yet, of course, that is the first thing that every interpreter of Nietzsche wants to do with his philosophy: specifically, pigeon-hole it, stereotype it, classify it...

Essentially, I am no different. I can only try to interpret Nietzsche better -- and/or in my own DGB way. At this point in time, I do not profess to be a Nietzschean 'expert' -- maybe in 5 or 10 years assuming I get the time and energy to engage in all of his different books. (An interview of Dr. Donald Meichenbaum from 2002 that I just read and included in the essay below this one says that it takes about 7 years to become an 'expert' at, or in, anything -- generally including 'practical-experiential-hands-on learning and knowledge' as well as 'book-learned knowledge').

Until I reach that point which may be never, assume that you will continue to get these ongoing 'Nietzchean interpretive updates' from time to time as DGB Philosophy continues to evolve and with it new, modified interpretations of Nietzsche become significantly relevant enough to write about them.

Here are 7 elements of Nietzschean Philosophy that I have ascertained so far:

A/ The Seven Faces of Nietzsche

1. Nietzsche The (Birth of Tragedy) Apollonian-Dionysian Centralist (Focusing On the Hegelian Triadic Principle of Dialectic-Homeostatic Balance (Thesis/Apollonianism, Anti-Thesis/Dionysianism, Synthesis/Apollonian-Dionysianism);

2. Nietzsche The Deconstructionist, Post-Modernist, and Anti Grand Narrativist (Anti-Hegelian, Anti-Christian, Anti-Science, Anti-Herd Mentality...Anti-Everything almost...;

3. Nietzsche The Champion of Dionysian Philosophy;

4. Nietzsche The Champion of The Superman and The Will To Power Philosophy;

5. Nietzsche The Radical Myth-Maker: Meaning 'The Myth of Eternal Recurrence'

6. 6. Nietzsche The Abyss Philosopher: Don't Stare Too Long At The Abyss Lest The Abyss Stare Back At You -- And Scare The Life Out Of You, Extinguishing Your Life Flame, Pushing You From Panic Mode To Frozen Immobility and Death Through The Process Of Anxiety Neurosis, Angst, Existential Neurosis, Leaving You Unable To Think Properly, To Make a Necessary Decision, A Necessary Choice, An Essential Action, And/Or To Bring Together Enough Self Courage To Leap -- Or Build A Bridge Across -- The Abyss Of Life and Death, Of Being, Non-Being, and Becoming; When We Don't Take The Risk Of Living To Become Who We Are Capable Of Becoming, We Wither Away into The Non-Existence, The Non-Being, The Self-Depression Of A Life That Is No Longer Being Lived Passionately But Instead Has Turned Us Into A Walking Corpse, A Stepford Man Or Woman, A Stepford Husband Or Wife, A Stepford Parent or Child, A Stepford Employer Or Employee, A Stepford Teacher or Student -- A Plastic Man or Woman With A Pasted, Phoney Smile, Glued On But Not Real, Not Passionate, Not Alive...A Good, Submissive Christian or Muslim or Employee or Student or Child or Model or Actor or Celebrity...That Is Dying Inside Because We Have No Insides That Are Real As Opposed To Estranged, And That We Can Call Our Own As Opposed To Someone Else's Whom We Have Internalized And Called Our Own But Not Assimilated To Be A Part Of Who We Were and Are Meant To Be...

7. Nietzsche The Arrogant, Individualist and Elitist But Don't Call Him A Nazi Because He Hated any Association With A 'Group-Think/Herd-Mentality'.


I will spend the rest of this essay focusing on Nietzsche's 'BT, Post-Hegelian, Apollonian-Dionysian, Dialectic-Homeostatic-Balance' Philosophy. Appreciate it while you read it because it didn't last long -- only through his first book, The Birth of Tragedy.

I view Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology as an integrative synthesis of:

1. Nietszsche's BT Philosophy;

2. Nietzsche's combined Superman, Will-To-Power, and Abyss-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy; and

3. Nietzsche's criticial Deconstructionism and Post-Modernism -- Towards A More Dialectic-Homeostatic Balanced Philosophy-Psychology Such as Between Apollo and Dionysus, Individual and State, Liberalism and Conservatism, Capitalism and Socialism, Narcissism and Altruism...

The three parts of Nietszche and his philosophy that I -- meaning DGB Philosophy -- leave behind are:

1. Nietzsche's radical extremism and arrogant elitism;

2. Nietzsche's myth of 'eternal recurrence';

3. Nietzsche's disdain for 'Grand Narratives' and 'Constructive Philosophy' of any and all types (including his own) that have an actual 'substance' and 'structure' to it...

Let's take a closer look at Nietzsche's 'BT Philosophy'...

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Part 2: Nietzsche's First Philosophy: 'The Birth of Tragedy' Philosophy

Four of Nietzsche's earliest important influences were:

1. Greek Tragedy;
2. Hegel;
3. Schopenhauer; and
4. Richard Wagner.

Together these influences came together in his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy'.

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The Birth of Tragedy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music

Cover of the 1993 Penguin edition
Author Friedrich Nietzsche
Original title 'Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik'
Translator Shaun Whiteside
Country Germany
Language German
Subject(s) Greek tragedy, the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition
Genre(s) philology
Publication date 1872
Media type Paperback, hardcover
Pages 160 (1993 Penguin ed.)
ISBN ISBN 978-0140433395 (1993 Penguin ed.)
Followed by The Untimely Meditations
(1876)

The Birth of Tragedy (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 1872) is a 19th Century work of philosophy by Friedrich Nietzsche. The full title translates as The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. It was reissued in 1886 as The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus). The later edition contained a prefatory essay, An Attempt at Self-Criticism, wherein Nietzsche commented on this very early work.

Contents

1 The book
2 The Apollonian and the Dionysian
3 Influences
4 Reception
5 Quotations
6 Notes
7 References
8 See also
9 External links



The book

Nietzsche found in Greek tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism and Nihilism one might find in a fundamentally meaningless world. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering and affirming it, passionately and joyously, affirmed the meaning in their own existence. They knew themselves to be infinitely more than the petty individuals of the apparent world, finding self-affirmation, not in another life, not in a world to come, but in the terror and ecstasy alike celebrated in the performance of tragedies.

Originally educated as a philologist, Nietzsche discusses the history of the Greek tragedy, and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (very loosely: reality undifferentiated by forms and like distinctions versus reality as differentiated by forms, or the forms themselves). Nietzsche claims life always involves a struggle between these two elements, each battling for control over the existence of humanity. In Nietzsche's words, "Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed.... wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing than ever." Yet neither side ever prevails due to each containing the other in an eternal, natural check, or balance.

Nietzsche argues that the tragedy of Ancient Greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole, allowing the spectator to experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Dionysiac element was to be found in the music of the chorus, while the Apollonian element was found in the dialogue which gave a concrete symbolism that balanced the Dionysiac revelry. Basically, the Apollonian spirit was able to give form to the abstract Dionysian.

Before the tragedy, there was an era of static, idealized plastic art in the form of sculpture that represented the Apollonian view of the world. The Dionysian element was to be found in the wild revelry of festivals and drunkenness, but, most importantly, in music. The combination of these elements in one art form gave birth to tragedy. He theorizes that the chorus was originally always satyrs, goat-men. (This is speculative, although the word “tragedy” τραγωδία is contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song" from tragos = "goat" and aeidein = "to sing".) Thus, he argues, “the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man” for the audience; they participated with and as the chorus empathetically, “so that they imagined themselves as restored natural geniuses, as satyrs.” But in this state, they have an Apollonian dream vision of themselves, of the energy they're embodying. It’s a vision of the god, of Dionysus, who appears before the chorus on the stage. And the actors and the plot are the development of that dream vision, the essence of which is the ecstatic dismembering of the god and of the Bacchantes' rituals, of the inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence…

After the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles, there was an age where tragedy died. Nietzsche ties this to the influence of writers like Euripides and the coming of rationality, represented by Socrates. Euripides reduced the use of the chorus and was more naturalistic in his representation of human drama, making it more reflective of the realities of daily life. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. For Nietzsche, these two intellectuals helped drain the ability of the individual to participate in forms of art, because they saw things too soberly and rationally. The participation mystique aspect of art and myth was lost, and along with it, much of man's ability to live creatively in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life. Nietzsche concludes that it may be possible to reattain the balance of Dionysian and Apollonian in modern art through the operas of Richard Wagner, in a rebirth of tragedy.

The Apollonian and the Dionysian

In contrast to the typical Enlightenment view of ancient Greek culture as noble, simple, elegant and grandiose,[1], Nietzsche believed the Greeks were grappling with pessimism. The universe in which we live is the product of great interacting forces; but we neither observe nor know these as such. What we put together as our conceptions of the world, Nietzsche thought, never actually addresses the underlying realities. It is human destiny to be controlled by the darkest universal realities and, at the same time, to live life in a human-dreamt world of illusions.

It was precisely this human-dreamt world that the Greeks had developed into perfection from the Homeric legends onward. The Olympian complex of deities, combined with all the details of their heroic lives and their numerous interactions with men and women of earth, formed a world picture in which individual people can live. This picture literally rendered humans as individuals, capable of greatness, always of significance. There is, in this world, objective clarity. The beings are almost sculpted. Hence, Athenians mature within the illusions of a world and life that is under control and that has clear models of personal significance and greatness. It is a beautiful creation. But it is, as Nietzsche observes, an Apollonian aesthetics, Apollo being the god who most typifies the Olympian complex in this regard. (BT, 1, p. 36) Apollo is the god of plastic arts and of illusion.

The problem—and it is a problem for all times and all human life—is that the dark side of existence makes itself apparent and forces us to confront whatever we have tried to shut out of our nice, tidy livable world. Thus, for Nietzsche, while the Greeks, and the Athenians in particular, had developed a rich world view based on Apollo and the other Olympian gods, they had rendered themselves largely ignorant of reality's dark side, as represented in the god Dionysus. Only in the distant past, and largely outside of Athens, had Dionysian festivals paved the way to direct (and destructive) experience of life's darkest sides—intoxication, sexual license, absorption by the primal horde, in short, dissolution of the individual (occasionally, actual dismemberment) and re-immersion into a common organic whole. (BT, 2, pp. 39-40)

The Apollonian in culture he sees as Arthur Schopenhauer's concept of the principium individuationis (principle of individuation) with its refinement, sobriety and emphasis on superficial appearance, whereby man separates himself from the undifferentiated immediacy of nature. Nietzsche claims sculpture as the art-form that captures this impulse most fully: sculpture has clear and definite boundaries and seeks to represent reality, in its perfectly stable form. The Dionysian impulse, by contrast, features immersion in the wholeness of nature, intoxication, non-rationality, and inhumanity; rather than the detached, rational representation of the Apollonian that invites similarly detached observation, the Dionysian impulse involves a frenzied participation in life itself. Nietzsche sees the Dionysian impulse as best realized in music, which tends not to have clear boundaries, is unstable and non-representational, and, in Nietzsche's view, invites participation among its listeners through dance. Nietzsche argues that the Apollonian has dominated Western thought since Socrates, but he sees German Romanticism (especially Richard Wagner) as a possible re-introduction of the Dionysian, which might offer the salvation of European culture. The book shows the influence of Schopenhauer.[2]

The issue, then, or so Nietzsche thought, is how to experience and understand the Dionysian side of life without destroying the obvious values of the Apollonian side. It is not healthy for an individual, or for a whole society, to become entirely absorbed in the rule of one or the other. The soundest (healthiest) foothold is in both. Nietzsche's theory of Athenian tragic drama suggests exactly how, before Euripides and Socrates, the Dionysian and Apollonian elements of life were artistically woven together. The Greek spectator became healthy through direct experience of the Dionysian within the protective spirit-of-tragedy on the Apollonian stage.


Influences


The Birth of Tragedy is a young man's work, and shows the influence of many of the philosophers Nietzsche had been studying. His interest in classical Greece as in some respects a rational society can be attributed in some measure to the influence of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, although Nietzsche departed from Winckelmann in many ways. In addition, Nietzsche uses the term "naive" in exactly the sense used by Friedrich Schiller. More important influences include Hegel, whose concept of the dialectic underlies the tripartite division of art into the Apollonian, its Dionysian antithesis, and their synthesis in Greek tragedy. Also of great importance are the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Representation. The Apollonian experience bears great similarity to the experience of the world as "representation" in Schopenhauer's sense, and the experience of the Dionysian bears similarities to the identification with the world as "will." Nietzsche opposed Schopenhauer's Buddhistic negation of the will. He argued that life can be worth living despite the enormous amount of cruelty and suffering that exists.[3]

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DGB Editorial Comments (Optimistic vs. Pessimistic Epistemology)


You can never completely track down a philosopher's entire historical line of influence. Every time you think you have captured all of the most important lines or sources of influence of a philosopher, all of a sudden, a couple of more influences pop into vision. And so it is with Nietzsche. New interpretations of Nietzsche bring to light new lines and sources of influence.

Until I read the interpretation of Nietzsche's BT from above (Wikipedia) -- and this might have been the second or third time that I read it -- I had never as completely viewed Nietzsche's BT as a 'spinoff' and 'modified extrapolation' of Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Representation' as I have at this moment.

Specifically, I can see now how Schopenhauer's 'World of Representation' became Nietzsche's 'Apollonian World' just as clearly as Nietzsche's 'Apollonian World' would later become Freud's 'Realm of The Superego' (Society's Ethical and Legal Restraints) in Classical Psychoanalysis. Similarily, Schopenhauer's 'World of Will' would become Nietzsche's 'Dionysian World' which in turn would later be translated by Freud into 'The Realm of The Id' (The World of Biological, Instinctual Dionysian Forces).

Furthermore, behind Schopenhauer's 'World of Representation' you can find the lingering influence of Kant's 'Phenomenal World' -- or 'World of Appearances' -- and behind that -- even Plato's and Parmenides' influence.

Now Kant's Phenomenal World -- or World of 'Appearances' as opposed to 'Actual Realities' -- has caused many philosophers including Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and even partly Freud, a world of problems and grief ever since Kant most clearly established this most mind-bending and mind-numbing 'subjective-objective paradox or dichotomy'. .

Indeed, I don't think even Kant would have liked the way that his philosophy -- and particularly his 'World of Appearances' -- was interpreted after he died. Is the 'epistmelogical world of man half full or half empty'. Accepting different proportions here for different epistemological interpretations on different life 'things' and 'processes', we can focus either on the part 'we got/get right' or the 'part we got/get wrong'. This can be the sole difference between an 'optimistic' vs. a 'pessimistic' or even 'cynical' attitude.

You see, at this point, DGB Philosophy turns completely away from the epistemological legacy of Parmenides, Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche -- arguably Kant was the least guilty of all the others -- and turns to a completely different line of epistemologists -- for lack of a better word call this next line of epistemologists 'Objectivist Epistemologists': Aristotle, Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, The Enlightenment Philosophers (Diderot, Voltaire, Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson...), Bertrand Russell, General Semantics (led by Alfred Korzybski and his main student, S.I.Hayakawa), Erich Fromm, Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden...


These are my main DGB epistemological influences -- although I am also very much aware and attuned to the more 'subjectivist' and/or 'narcissitic influences of Schopenhauer, Nietsche, Foucault, Derrida, and the rest of the 'deconstructionists' and 'post-modernists' as well.

The crucial epistemological issue at stake is this: How much does our 'World of Epistemological Representation' represent a world of 'truth and objectivity and structural similarity' i.e. have 'truth value' vs. alternatively, how does our epistemological representations represent a world of 'subjectivity, relativism, narcissistic bias, appearance, illusion, deception, dog and pony shows, sophistry...etc.?

And the answer is that our epistemological world of representation represents -- both. Both truth and structural similarity on the one hand, vs. sophistry, illusion, and deception on the other hand depending on the particular context and circumstances of each epistemological event that we are talking about.

Alternatively, it's all a matter of which side of the philosophical and epistemological equation each philosopher/epistemologist wants to emphasize -- the part we get 'right' and/or the part we get 'wrong'.

Do we want to emphasize the mistakes, illusions, deceptions, and narcissistic biases in human epistemology? Or do we want to emphasize the accuracies, the structural similarities, the facts, the truth... between 'the real' and 'the represented'?

Is the glass half full? Or half empty?


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Apollo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apollo

2nd century AD Roman statue of Apollo depicting the god's attributes - the lyre and the snake Python

God of music, poetry and oracles
Parents Zeus and Leto
Siblings Artemis
Children Asclepius, Troilus, Aristaeus

Ancient Greek Religion


Main doctrines
Polytheism · Mythology · Hubris
Orthopraxy · Reciprocity · Virtue
Practices
Amphidromia · Iatromantis
Pharmakos · Temples
Votive Offerings · Animal sacrifice

Deities
Twelve Olympians:
Ares · Artemis · Aphrodite · Apollo
Athena · Demeter · Dionysus · Hera ·
Hermes · Hephaestus · Poseidon · Zeus
---
Primordial deities:
Aether · Chaos · Chronos · Erebus
Gaia · Hemera · Nyx · Tartarus · Oranos
---
Lesser gods:
Eros · Hebe · Hecate · Helios
Herakles · Hestia · Iris · Selene · Pan · Nike

Texts
Iliad · Odyssey
Theogony · Works and Days

See also:

Decline of Hellenistic polytheism
Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism
Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes

Ancient Roman Religion

Main doctrines

Polytheism & Numen
Mythology
Imperial Cult · Festivals
Practices
Temples · Funerals
Votive Offerings · Animal sacrifice

Ceres · Diana · Juno
Jupiter · Mars · Mercury · Minerva
Neptune · Venus · Vulcan
Divus Augustus · Divus Caesar
Fortuna · Pluto · Quirinus
Sol Invictus · Vesta
The Lares

---

In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo (in Greek, Ἀπόλλων—Apóllōn or Ἀπέλλων—Apellōn), is one of the most important and many-sided of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshipped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Hellenic neopaganism.

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god — the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius. Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon.[1] In Latin texts, however, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161-215).[2] Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third century CE.

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More DGB Editorial Comments on Nietzsche's 'Birth of Tragedy' Philosophy

So here's the situation: Nietzsche enters into BT a 'Hegelian philosopher', partly mesmerized, defined, and subsumed by Schopehnauer as well - but partly able to shake Schopenhauer off his tail.

You see, by all accounts, Schopenhauer was a nasty, nasty man, and he wrote a nasty, nasty philosophical treatise. I don't know how many of you have read the book, or seen the movie, 'Lord of The Flies' -- but that was Schopenhauer's narcissistic philosophical treatise in a nutshell -- softened a little bit by a couple of strategies that Schopenhauer advocated to try to 'escape the ugliness, irrationality, viciousness, violence, and coldness of life' such as: 1. take up Buddhism and learn how 'not to want' (Gee, that's easy.); and 2. go the theatre, enjoy good art, and use the whole medium of art, theatre, and music to escape the ugliness, irrationality, and tragedy of your 'Lord of The Flies' existence.

I can identify with this last strategy partly. I write at least partly to compensate for, and/or escape, my 'Lord of The Flies' existence. And an 'economic recession' -- that seems about to turn into an an 'economic depression' --
tightens the screws on everybody. So does bad business decisions and a bad business environment. For that matter, so does a bad love relationship, a bad family situation, and internal negativity. I'm not identifying with all these different situations -- but at least some of them.

Now you can do what Schopenhauer would have us do -- and run from all of these different 'bad' situations -- for example, leave your bad situation at work and go to the theatre. And find your 'emotional cathartic release' in a good Greek Tragedy (or a Shakespearian tragedy, or presumably any form of 'good theatre').

Or you can do what Nietzsche decided to do -- and that was to 'embrace life to the fullest passion and intensity in all of its highest highs and lowest lows. Whether good or bad, you don't run from life -- you passionately embrace it.

Two very different forms of 'philosophical psychotherapy'. Nietzsche partly embraced both Hegel and Schopenhauer -- before fully turning away from Hegel's 'dialectic' approach to philosophy and life; and partly turning away from Schopenhauer's 'extreme pessism' and his 'suppress-your-desires-in-Budhism' as well.

Still the philosophical remnants of Schopenhauer remained in Nietzsche (as they would both strongly seep into Freud and Psychoanalysis later).

And nowhere did Schopenhauer's remnants remain alive more than they did in Nietzsche's perception and judgment of 'Apollo' which rather than an 'Enlightenment' interpretation of Apollo as The God of 'Truth, Ethics, Law, and Order' would come to mean something entirely different to Nietzsche in the order of 'Social and Political Illusion, Sophistry and Ideology' ('ideology' in the terminology of Marx later)..

This is a sad statement of Apollo's Greek legacy in my opinion.

I prefer Nietzsche's BT philosophy of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance' (in DGB terminology) between the 'Apollonian' part of man and the 'Dionysian' part of man as laid out in his classic first book, 'The Birth Of Tragedy'.

But like Freud would abandon his 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory', so too would Nietzsche basically abandon the 'Apollonian part of man' in BT -- to the detriment of his later more 'extremist-Humanstic-Existential Superman or Will to Power Philosophy'.

We will attend to Nietzsche's later humanistic-existential philosophical developments in later essays...

dgb, Feb. 10th, 2009, updated and modified Mar. 30th, May 11th, 2009.

Different Types of Dialectics in Hegel's Hotel, in Society, in Rights and Responsibilities, in Impulses and Restraints -- and in Ancient Myths

Still under construction....Things are churning and turning in Hegel's Hotel, and it may still be a day or two before I can go back to this essay, pick up the pieces, and probably take it in a new direction...dgb, March 30th, 2009.

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I want to go back and re-visit our definition of 'dialectic' as well as distinguish between some of the different types of dialectics that we will be investigating in many of the next series of essays that deal particularly with 'DGB Personality Theory'.

'Dialectic Theory' -- at least as it is currently being defined here in Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- explores, investigates, interprets and evaluates 'the particular chemistry, back and forth influence and bi-causality, associated with any encounter, relationship, and/or life or death process where the sum total is more than the sum of the individual parts working towards the completion of the particular process being investigated'.

When the particular situation or process that is being interpreted and evaluated involves more than two factors, more than two individual entities pushing against each other or relating with each other, then we can start talking about the ideas of 'multiple-dialectic theory', 'multiple-inluence', and/or 'multiple causality'.

The reason for this type of emphasis, is that too often in Western Society, we tend to emphasize a type of 'either/or' philosophy that lends itself to the ideas of 'one-sided causality', 'one dimensional thinking', 'one-sided responsibility and/or blame', and 'over-compensatory thinking and action' triggered by this process of one-sided thinking.

The results for trying to 'solve a particular problem' or 'resolve a particular conflict' using this one-sided and/or overcompensatory approach to problem-solving and conflict-resolving can be catastrophic -- sometimes, or even oftentimes, the 'supposed solution' to the problem turning out to be significantly worse -- or at least just as bad -- as the original problem or conflict itself.

In any society, any democracy, there is always going to be a 'clash between different individuals rights and freedoms, wishes, goals, and philosophies'.

Similarily, there are also going to be clashes between individual liberties and wishes on the one hand vs. ethical-moral, and/or legal responsibilities and restraints relative to the country, state, province, and/or town/township/city that we live in.

Thus, we can distinguish between an 'individual rights vs. individual rights dialectic' and an 'individual rights vs. state, government, and/or society legal responsibility dialectic'.

Similarily, we can distinguish between 'friendly' vs. 'hostile' dialectics, 'competitive' vs. 'co-operative' dialectics, 'will to power' vs. 'will to negotiate' dialectics, and 'authoritarian-dictatorial' vs. 'equal rights-democratic' dialectics.

In Hegel's Hotel -- i.e., in the smaller Personality Theory model -- we can talk about numerous different types of dialectics such as between: 'The Potential Self' and 'Mythological Archetype Figures'; or between 'The Potential Self' and 'Transference Dynamics and Complexes', or between 'The Potential Self' and 'The Central Ego', or between the 'Nurturing Topdog' and 'The Critical Topdog', or between 'The Critical Topdog' and 'The Approval-Seeking Underdog' or between 'The Critical Topdog' and 'The Rebellious Underdog'.

So you can see where I get the idea of 'multiple dialectics' from. And this is just using my own DGB Philosophy-Psychology terminology. You change the particular model that we are working with and this is going to have an impact on the way we talk about the particular 'dialectic-dynamics' associated with the language and the conceptuology of the new model we are talking about. For example in Freudian language, we could talk about 'ego' vs. 'id' dialectics or 'superego' vs. 'id' dialectics whereas we could change to a Jungian model and then talk about the dialectics between 'personna' and 'shadow'.

All of these are conceptual distinctions are meant to give us a 'parameter or container' by which to talk about the distinctions in life that these concepts are meant to refer to -- i.e., their 'real life ('phenomenal, phenomenological, and/or existential) referents'.

The 'distinction between two different and opposed ideas' is to allow us the freedom to talk about these 'real life' differences that can be categorized using the terminology and conceptuology that we have chosen to use.

'I think, therefore I am.' (Descartes said that).
'I am, therefore I think.' (I -- and DGB Philosophy -- just said that, although 'Existence before essence' by Jean-Paul Sartre comes pretty close to the same idea, and more importantly, it was primarily Hegel who introduced the idea of 'dialectic influence' or 'dialectic causality' meaning 'two-way -- not one way -- influence'.)

DGB Philosophy-Psychology explores the integrative dimensions and dialectics, meaning the two way dimensions and characteristics between both Self and Other(s), as well as between the Self and other parts and/or dimensions of the Self.

Two other conceptual distinctions that may be functionally useful relative to our Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory model -- is the distinction between 'vertical dialectics' and 'horizontal dialectics'.

Vertical dialectics refers to different levels of 'unconsciousness' (for example, the deep level of mythology, symbolism, and archetype figures) mixing together with 'individual transference complexes' (based on individual memories, old and new) being interwoven together by our Central Ego (partly asleep, partly awake while we are asleep in bed) in a state of 'preconsciousness' -- 'three different levels or floors of functioning in the Hegel's Hotel personality model' -- all coming together in the form of one 'confluent creative product or outcome' -- such as a dream, which we may or may not remember when we wake up.

Here is where 'DGB Transference Theory' starts to come together with 'DGB Personality Theory'.

In DGB Transference Theory, a distinction can be made between a 'Relationship Transference' on the one hand(such as a 'Father Complex' and/or a 'Mother Complex'), and between an 'Encounter or Specific Memory Transference'. Now DGB Transference and Personality Theory does not believe in -- and look to uncover -- an 'unconscious memory' like a Freudian Psychoanalyst would, or does (looking for an 'Oedipal Memory/Fantasy') through a process of 'free association, memory uncovering, and/or memory reconstruction; and/or like a 'Seduction/Sexual Assault/Traumacy' Psychotherapist might go looking for an 'unconcious traumacy, childhood seduction, and/or sexual assault' memory in a client through some similar and/or different process of 'memory uncovering' or 'memory reconstruction'.

No, in this domain, I subscribe at least partly to Jeffrey Masson's line of thinking that argues -- that if a 'bad -- i.e., traumatic (sexual seduction and/or assault) memory' happened, then it will likely be 'remembered'. However, unlike Masson, I still believe that there could be, indeed likely is to be, some element of 'significant subjective, narcissistic distortion and individual bias' at work in the 'recalling' of this memory.

This brings into question the relative 'objectivity and truth value' of these types of memories vs. the possible and/or actual 'distortion and subjective-narcissistic bias' that may be found in these types of memories. Should a therapist unquestioningly look at these types of memories in terms of their 'truth value'? This was the rather painful philosophical and psychological question that I believe Freud was wrestling with back around 1896-1899 that is just as philosophically as hard to answer today as it was back then. The truth probably lies in the fact that every case situation -- and every psychotherapeutic client -- is different, and each offers a unique blend of 'objective truth value' and/or 'subjective narcissistic distortion' in their recall of their individual memories.

Now it may be fine for a therapist -- at least at the beginning of a therapeutic relationship -- to work with the 'subjectively perceived truth value' of a client's particular recall of his or her childhood memories. I do not subscribe to any therapeutic technique of 'leading the witness', 'leading the client' in the direction of some pre-held, stereotyped psychological theory' -- regardless of whether that be towards a Classic Freudian 'Oedipal-Childhood Sexuality-Distorted Memory to Fantasy' theory; or towards a pre-Classic 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory-Memory-as-Truth' theory brought back to life and practised by some modern-day Traumacy-Seduction Psychotherapists today.

Both 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis' psychological theories and psychotherapies can suffer equally from narcissistic bias and distortion -- and each can be equally dangerous in a court of law. Beware the judge and/or jury who has to deal with either or both types of therapists in a court of law. Without further 'empirical evidence' and/or 'credible witnesses', I personally believe that all 'unsubstantiated memories' should be thrown out of a court of law. Our courts of law -- and here we are talking about both family and criminal law, indeed, all law --need to hold strongly to the principles of 'supporting empirical evidence' and/or 'strong, credible witnesses' to substantiate any type of 'memory' that may or may not have 'significant truth value'. We must hold firmly to the idea of 'innocent until proven guilty' -- and to me -- an unsubstantiated memory (childhood or adulthood) needs to be strongly substantiated before a person is convicted of being guilty of some crime that he or she may not have comitted. The same goes with all so-called 'expert testimony'. The potential result of not adhering to this principle of 'strong empiricial evidence' and/or 'supporting evidence' and/or 'credible testimony' -- is the very real danger of turning our present day Family, Domestic, and/or Criminal Courts into a 'deeply biased' modern-day 'Salem Witchunt'.

In this modern day at least partial version of 'The Salem Witchhunts' and/or 'the era of McCarthy looking for Communists', it is modern day 'men' and fathers' who have become most susceptible to these 'witchunts' -- to the legal accusation, prosectution, persecution, and conviction of men as 'victimizers' if not as 'witches'.

Make accountable and prosecute the men who are guilty of the crimes they have been accused of -- whether it be sexual assault, domestic assault, and/or childhood assault.

But let us not indulge as a society in 'Sexual Profiling' here -- of either sex (the mainly previous edition of 'Patriarchal Narcissistic Bias and Law' was and/or is no better or no worse than the presently evolving version of 'Feminist Narcissitic Bias and Law').

Here at Hegel's Hotel and DGB Philosophy we don't want to indulge in 'Sexual Profiling of either sex' any more than we want to indulge in 'Racial Profiling' of any race.

With all due respect, we need to 'undo' some of the societal damage already created by the presence of literally hundreds of egalatarian and/or narcissistic feminist lobbyist groups constantly bombarding both Washington and Ottawa 'for a continual enhancement or embellishment of female civil rights' into present day law. These feminist lobbyists groups have very real political and legal power -- and/or are strongly capable of influencing the continual evolution of new civil laws without the presence of an equally strong presence of 'masculine rights group' to counter-act the strong lobbying force of feminine rights groups which continues to 'chip away at' -- either directly or indirectly, purposely or non-purposely -- the masculine rights and freedoms of 'men' and 'fathers' in Western society that men used to previously take for granted.

You see it is not only 'corporate lobbyist groups' who we have to worry about in Washington and Ottawa -- but all 'special interest lobbyist groups' that are very capable of 'upsetting the very precarious homeostatic-dialecitic-democractic legal balance of society' in narcisstic favor of and bias towards the particular special interest lobbyist group that keeps pounding away at North American politicans and lawmakers looking for more and more laws in their favor.

This problem of special interest lobbyst groups is not only causing great problems in the financial and economic sector of 'Main Street' Americans and Canadians but also in another sector of society entirely -- in the political, legal, and economic battle of the sexes -- narcissistically biased feminist lobbyst groups are causing an oppositely biased legal division between the sexes that is causing as many if not more civil rights problems than these 'new domestic and sexual laws supporting the protection of women and children' are supposed to be solving.


Let us make this totally clear. I support 'Egalitarian Feminist Rights' (the pursuit of equal sexual rights in society). I do not support 'Narcissistic Feminist Rights' (the pursuit of every possible sexual legal advantage of women over men). The first group of 'egalitarian feminists' support the concept of 'democracy' and 'equal rights' -- for both sexes, every race, every culture... The second group of 'narcissitic feminists' are simply 'biased, narcissistic patriarchs and male chauvanists' -- disguised in women's clothing wanting all the 'narcissistic legal advantages that men used to have in a patriarchal dominated society'.

I have steered away from the Freudian problem of 'The Seduction Theory' and the modern-day version of The Seduction Theory Problem in the form of 'violence in the family', 'domestic violence', 'sexual violence', 'violence between the sexes', and Family/Domestic/Sexual Court Law -- in general I have steered away from this 'Huge Can of Philosophical, Political, and Legal Worms' -- for the past year or two because I wanted to establish a solid philosophical base for Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy before I started to rhetorically attack or 'deconstruct' our modern day 'family' and 'sexual' laws. I wanted something more solid to stand on other than the full extent of my own righteous anger, indeed at some points, rage.

As already stated before, numerous, numerous times -- I absolutely believe in, and support, the principles of Democracy and Equal Rights between men and women -- and a strong civil, political, legal, and economic adherence to these democratic and equal rights principles.

However, today 'Feminist Narcissism' that is in no way egalitarian to both sexes but rather gives women a decided political and legal edge in Family and Sexual Criminal Law is just as rampant, just as out of control, and just as destructive to present day society as the fading Patriarchal Narcissistic Political and Legal Bias that it is fast replacing -- indeed, has already dominantly replaced.


Let us step away for a minute from the whole emotional mess of 'men' vs. 'women' in domestic and family courts today and back up a few steps. Did I mention the dialectic between 'men' and 'women' as being a dialectic that is also extemely important to fully talk about in any philosophical and/or psychological enterprise worthy of this name?

I just picked up a book about half an hour ago that I hadn't read in about 30 years.
I was led back to the book -- I just located the book in my library earlier this morning -- by a 'memory'. The memory came back to me in the form of one word -- 'Antigone'. The book was called, 'The Forgotten Language', written by Erich Fromm, one of my favorite 'philosopoher-psychologists', published in 1951. I first read it somewhere between 1974 and 1976, I do believe.

In 'The Forgotten Language', Fromm gave an alternative humanistic-existential perspective and approach to 'dream interpretation' to that postulated by Freud relative to his sexual wish fulfillment theory in the latter's classic book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams', 1900.

You see, in order to understand why Freud abandoned -- or at least partly abandoned -- his Traumacy-Seduction Theory back between 1896 and 1899, you have to also at least partly understand the theory that Freud was in the process of replacing The Traumacy-Seduction Theory with -- and that was, a combination of three theories: 1. Memory Distortion, Screen Memories, and Memories Containing Wish-Fulfillment Fantasies' within them; 2. Infantile and Childhood Sexuality; and 3. The Oedipal Complex (based on The Oedipal Myth where Oedipus unknowingly fufilled a prophecy that he was trying desparately for most of his childhood, teenage, and early adult life to avoid -- specifically, that he would kill his father and marry his mother).

Freud argued in 'The Interpretation of Dreams' that all men -- as children -- have an 'incestual wish to have sex with their mother, and to kill their father so that they can 'possess' the mother. Incestual sex with the mother by the male child is a dominant male child wish, according to Freud, and the underlying mythological base of 'The Oedipal Myth' and the classic Freudian 'Oedipal Complex'.

Fromm argues, alternatively, that the Sophocles myth of Oedipus is actually a trilogy, and when all three myths are interpreted together, it can be seen that the dominant theme in this trilogy is not 'incestuous sex between son and mother' but rather the 'Patriarchal Authoritarian Rebellion' of the son against the father.

Fromm's interpretation has flooded me with some new philosophical interpretations of my own. Indeed, I think this represents another important turning point in the evolution of Hegel's Hotel.

We will now start to look at some of the implications of the dialectic divergence and convergence of 'patriarchal myths, laws, and societies' vs. 'matriarchal myths, laws, and societies' in the history of Western -- and Eastern -- and Middle Eastern -- Culture have on the evolution of Hegel's Hotel.

That will have to wait for another day.

-- dgb, March 30th, 2009.

From the internet...Eric Berne and Transactional Analysis........www.businessballs.com website.

© Alan Chapman 1995-2007. Transactional Analysis theory was developed by Dr Eric Berne in the 1950's.



transactional analysis

Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis - early TA history and theory
Transactional Analysis is one of the most accessible theories of modern psychology. Transactional Analysis was founded by Eric Berne, and the famous 'parent adult child' theory is still being developed today. Transactional Analysis has wide applications in clinical, therapeutic, organizational and personal development, encompassing communications, management, personality, relationships and behaviour. Whether you're in business, a parent, a social worker or interested in personal development, Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis theories, and those of his followers, will enrich your dealings with people, and your understanding of yourself. This section covers the background to Transactional Analysis, and Transactional Analysis underpinning theory. See also the modern Transactional Analysis theory article.

roots of transactional analysis
Throughout history, and from all standpoints: philosophy, medical science, religion; people have believed that each man and woman has a multiple nature.

In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud first established that the human psyche is multi-faceted, and that each of us has warring factions in our subconscious. Since then, new theories continue to be put forward, all concentrating on the essential conviction that each one of us has parts of our personality which surface and affect our behaviour according to different circumstances.

In 1951 Dr Wilder Penfield began a series of scientific experiments. Penfield proved, using conscious human subjects, by touching a part of the brain (the temporal cortex) with a weak electrical probe, that the brain could be caused to 'play back' certain past experiences, and the feelings associated with them. The patients 'replayed' these events and their feelings despite not normally being able to recall them using their conventional memories.

Penfield's experiments went on over several years, and resulted in wide acceptance of the following conclusions:

The human brain acts like a tape recorder, and whilst we may 'forget' experiences, the brain still has them recorded.
Along with events the brain also records the associated feelings, and both feelings and events stay locked together.
It is possible for a person to exist in two states simultaneously (because patients replaying hidden events and feelings could talk about them objectively at the same time).
Hidden experiences when replayed are vivid, and affect how we feel at the time of replaying.
There is a certain connection between mind and body, i.e. the link between the biological and the psychological, eg a psychological fear of spiders and a biological feeling of nausea.
early transactional analysis theory and model
In the 1950's Eric Berne began to develop his theories of Transactional Analysis. He said that verbal communication, particularly face to face, is at the centre of human social relationships and psychoanalysis.

His starting-point was that when two people encounter each other, one of them will speak to the other. This he called the Transaction Stimulus. The reaction from the other person he called the Transaction Response.

The person sending the Stimulus is called the Agent. The person who responds is called the Respondent.

Transactional Analysis became the method of examining the transaction wherein: 'I do something to you, and you do something back'.

Berne also said that each person is made up of three alter ego states:

Parent
Adult
Child
These terms have different definitions than in normal language.

Parent
This is our ingrained voice of authority, absorbed conditioning, learning and attitudes from when we were young. We were conditioned by our real parents, teachers, older people, next door neighbours, aunts and uncles, Father Christmas and Jack Frost. Our Parent is made up of a huge number of hidden and overt recorded playbacks. Typically embodied by phrases and attitudes starting with 'how to', 'under no circumstances', 'always' and 'never forget', 'don't lie, cheat, steal', etc, etc. Our parent is formed by external events and influences upon us as we grow through early childhood. We can change it, but this is easier said than done.

Child
Our internal reaction and feelings to external events form the 'Child'. This is the seeing, hearing, feeling, and emotional body of data within each of us. When anger or despair dominates reason, the Child is in control. Like our Parent we can change it, but it is no easier.

Adult
Our 'Adult' is our ability to think and determine action for ourselves, based on received data. The adult in us begins to form at around ten months old, and is the means by which we keep our Parent and Child under control. If we are to change our Parent or Child we must do so through our adult.

In other words:

Parent is our 'Taught' concept of life
Adult is our 'Thought' concept of life
Child is our 'Felt' concept of life
When we communicate we are doing so from one of our own alter ego states, our Parent, Adult or Child. Our feelings at the time determine which one we use, and at any time something can trigger a shift from one state to another. When we respond, we are also doing this from one of the three states, and it is in the analysis of these stimuli and responses that the essence of Transactional Analysis lies. A wonderful analogy - 'the person who had feelings' story - explains how experiences and conditioning in early life affect behaviour in later life. See also the poem by Philip Larkin about how parental conditioning affects children and their behaviour into adulthood. And for an uplifting antidote see the lovely Thich Nhat Hanh quote. These are all excellent illustrations of the effect and implications of parental conditioning in the context of Transactional Analysis.

At the core of Berne's theory is the rule that effective transactions (ie successful communications) must be complementary. They must go back from the receiving ego state to the sending ego state. For example, if the stimulus is Parent to Child, the response must be Child to Parent, or the transaction is 'crossed', and there will be a problem between sender and receiver.

If a crossed transaction occurs, there is an ineffective communication. Worse still either or both parties will be upset. In order for the relationship to continue smoothly the agent or the respondent must rescue the situation with a complementary transaction.

In serious break-downs, there is no chance of immediately resuming a discussion about the original subject matter. Attention is focused on the relationship. The discussion can only continue constructively when and if the relationship is mended.

Here are some simple clues as to the ego state sending the signal. You will be able to see these clearly in others, and in yourself:

Parent
Physical - angry or impatient body-language and expressions, finger-pointing, patronising gestures,

Verbal - always, never, for once and for all, judgmental words, critical words, patronising language, posturing language.

N.B. beware of cultural differences in body-language or emphases that appear 'Parental'.

Child
Physical - emotionally sad expressions, despair, temper tantrums, whining voice, rolling eyes, shrugging shoulders, teasing, delight, laughter, speaking behind hand, raising hand to speak, squirming and giggling.

Verbal - baby talk, I wish, I dunno, I want, I'm gonna, I don't care, oh no, not again, things never go right for me, worst day of my life, bigger, biggest, best, many superlatives, words to impress.

Adult
Physical - attentive, interested, straight-forward, tilted head, non-threatening and non-threatened.

Verbal - why, what, how, who, where and when, how much, in what way, comparative expressions, reasoned statements, true, false, probably, possibly, I think, I realise, I see, I believe, in my opinion.



And remember, when you are trying to identify ego states: words are only part of the story.

To analyse a transaction you need to see and feel what is being said as well.

Only 7% of meaning is in the words spoken.
38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
55% is in facial expression. (source: Albert Mehrabian - more info)
There is no general rule as to the effectiveness of any ego state in any given situation (some people get results by being dictatorial (Parent to Child), or by having temper tantrums, (Child to Parent), but for a balanced approach to life, Adult to Adult is generally recommended.

Transactional Analysis is effectively a language within a language; a language of true meaning, feeling and motive. It can help you in every situation, firstly through being able to understand more clearly what is going on, and secondly, by virtue of this knowledge, we give ourselves choices of what ego states to adopt, which signals to send, and where to send them. This enables us to make the most of all our communications and therefore create, develop and maintain better relationships.





modern transactional analysis theory
Transactional Analysis is a theory which operates as each of the following:

a theory of personality
a model of communication
a study of repetitive patterns of behaviour
Transactional Analysis developed significantly beyond these Berne's early theories, by Berne himself until his death in 1970, and since then by his followers and many current writers and experts. Transactional Analysis has been explored and enhanced in many different ways by these people, including: Ian Stewart and Vann Joines (their book 'TA Today' is widely regarded as a definitive modern interpretation); John Dusay, Aaron and Jacqui Schiff, Robert and Mary Goulding, Pat Crossman, Taibi Kahler, Abe Wagner, Ken Mellor and Eric Sigmund, Richard Erskine and Marityn Zalcman, Muriel James, Pam Levin, Anita Mountain and Julie Hay (specialists in organizational applications), Susannah Temple, Claude Steiner, Franklin Ernst, S Woollams and M Brown, Fanita English, P Clarkson, M M Holloway, Stephen Karpman and others.

Significantly, the original three Parent Adult Child components were sub-divided to form a new seven element model, principally during the 1980's by Wagner, Joines and Mountain. This established Controlling and Nurturing aspects of the Parent mode, each with positive and negative aspects, and the Adapted and Free aspects of the Child mode, again each with positive an negative aspects, which essentially gives us the model to which most TA practitioners refer today:

parent
Parent is now commonly represented as a circle with four quadrants:

Nurturing - Nurturing (positive) and Spoiling (negative).

Controlling - Structuring (positive) and Critical (negative).

adult
Adult remains as a single entity, representing an 'accounting' function or mode, which can draw on the resources of both Parent and Child.

child
Child is now commonly represented as circle with four quadrants:

Adapted - Co-operative (positive) and Compliant/Resistant (negative).

Free - Spontaneous (positive) and Immature (negative).





Where previously Transactional Analysis suggested that effective communications were complementary (response echoing the path of the stimulus), and better still complementary adult to adult, the modern interpretation suggests that effective communications and relationships are based on complementary transactions to and from positive quadrants, and also, still, adult to adult. Stimulii and responses can come from any (or some) of these seven ego states, to any or some of the respondent's seven ego states.

modern transactional analysis - recent TA theory and development here




See also:

Love and Spirituality in the Workplace - bringing compassion and humanity to work

Erikson's Psychosocial Development Theory

Assertiveness and building self-confidence

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

Motivation

Facilitation theory and techniques

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) principles

The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz

Johari Window model

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Personality theories and types - Jung, Myers Briggs, Keirsey, Belbin, etc

Reiki healing, therapy, training and history, and the seven chakras

Stress causes and stress relief

Businessballs personal development main site




transactional analysis books
Recommended transactional analysis books:

TA Today - Ian Stewart & Vann Joines
I'm OK You're OK - Thomas and Amy Harris
Staying OK - Thomas and Amy Harris
Games People Play - Eric Berne
What Do You Say After You Say Hello - Eric Berne
Scripts People Live - Claude Steiner
The Total Handbook Of Transactional Analysis - Woollams & Brown
Transactional Analysis For Trainers - Julie Hay
The Transactional Manager - Abe Wagner

Up and Down 'The Elevator' in Hegel's Hotel and Into The Psychology and Personality Theory Section of The Hotel

For distinction and clarification purposes here, let me point out that I wish to reserve at least seven floors in Hegel's Hotel for the strict study of psychology -- most notably, personality theory and its various ramifications and offshoots into psychopathology (neurosis and psychosis or sczhizophrenia); personal growth; and clinical psychology/psychotherapy.

In this regard, I wish to introduce a model of the human psyche that will take up seven floors in the 'Psychology' section of Hegel's Hotel.

This model and the 'seven different floors' are described below:


................................................................................

A Hegel's Hotel Seven Floor Model of The Human Psyche

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 1: The 'First Basement Floor' will be dedicated to studying 'The Genetic, Potential Humanistic-Existential Self' -- 'The Essence, Architectural Design, and/ or Blue Print' of The Individual Self, Psyche, and/or Personality;

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 2: The 'Second Basement Floor': The Genetic and/or Collective Unconscious' including the study of mythology, archetypes, symbolism, creativity and dream work, Freud's 'primary process'...;

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 3: The 'Third Basement Floor' will be dedicated to the study of 'The Id' including all biological and psychiological influences on the personality, sex, violence, 'life vs. death impulses and/or wishes', fantasies, and their mythological, transference, and/or creative-destructive derivatives;

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 4: The 'Fourth Basement Floor' will be dedicated to the study of 'The Personal Unconscious' including learning and memory theory, conscious memories, subconscious memories, screen memories, unconscious and/or repressed memories, and 'The Transference Complex Templates';

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 5: 'The Main Lobby Floor' will be dedicated to the study of 'The Underdog Ego Functions and Agents' including: 1. 'The Co-operative (Approval-Seeking) Underdog Ego'; 2. 'The Rebellious-Righteous Underdog Ego'; 3. 'The Dionysian-Hedonistic-Narcissistic Underdog Ego'; and 4. The Schizoid (Distance-Seeking) Underdog Ego';

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 6: 'The First Mezzanine Floor' will be dedicated to the study of 1. 'The Central Mediating-Executive Ego'; and its corollorary agents 2. The Darwinian-Economic-Survival Ego'; 3. 'The Enlightenment Epistemological and Ethical Ego'; and 4. 'The Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Ego';

Hegel's Hotel Personality Theory Section -- Floor 7: 'The Upper Mezzanine Floor' will be dedicated to the study of 'The Topdog (Super) Ego Functions and Agents including: 1. 'The Nurturing-Supportive-Encouraging Topdog Ego'; 2. The Righteous-Critical-Rejecting-Exciting Topdog Ego; 3. The Dionysian-Hedonistic-Narcissistic Topdog Ego; and 4. The Schizoid (Distance-Seeking) Topdog Ego.



-- dgb, March 26th, 2009; updated April 26th, 2009

Life is a Race Against Death...From the Gap-DGB Archives, Undated, About 1999, Updated Mar. 26th, 2009

Life is a race against death,
Don't let your life slip away,
Without embracing it with your fullest passion.
Live and celebrate each day as if,
It is the only day you have.
(After all, none of us are likely to predict,
Which day will be our last.)

There is beauty in even the smallest things,
My Beta fish who has been living with me,
For a year and a half.
I call him -- 'Nietzsche'.
My 'Super-Beta-Fish'.

Each day is both a blessing and a challenge.

If we view each day as a curse,
Then we are doing something wrong,
And we need to do something different.

Make the most of this 'daily blessing'.
And meet each challenge head on.

Choose a project that is important to you.
A project that has meaning for you.
And embrace this project with your fullest passion.
Invest yourself in the project -- totally.
Meet this project with,
Preparation, courage, energy, effort, and action,
Fueled by your internal fire and excitement.

Anxiety is the flipside of excitement.
I learned this from Gestalt Therapy.

(Anxiety is where you start to focus,
On what you have to 'lose',
Rather than on what you have to 'win'.)

Don't let anxiety stop you in your tracks,
And derail you from pushing on with your project.
As well, don't let small mistakes or failures,
Discourage you from your goals.
Not even large mistakes or large failures.

Learn from them.
Make the necessary adjustments and compensations,
And move on.

Encourage yourself, support yourself.
Even when all others have jumped off your bandwagon,
Reward yourself for your small successes,
Let these small successes,
Energize you,
And thrust you forward.

Through the trenches and the mud,
Through the hard times,
Through the rain, the sleet, the snow.
Keep plugging on...

Keep attuned to what your project needs from you,
In the here and now, moment to moment,
One step at a time,
And don't get lost in your abstractions,
Or get bogged down,
Instead, let others feel your excitement,
And share it with you.

Push aside all visions of failure,
Just stick to your concrete goals and tasks,
And don't look up til it's time to take a break.

Don't give up,
And never say 'never'.
The worst thing you can say to yourself is,
'I didn't work hard enough to accomplish,
What I wanted to do.
I didn't work hard enough,
To be who I wanted to be.'

In this regard,
Eliminate the word 'try' from your vocabulary,
'Dont' try, just do!'

'Trying' is too often an internal admission of,
Expected failure,
A self-fulfiling prophecy of 'non-committment',
To your task at hand,
Of not wanting to do, what you say you want to do.
Of not wanting to do the work to get you,
To where you need to go.
If the task is important to your larger goals,
Then don't 'try', just do!

Eliminate all excuses from your repertoire.
And 'will your way' to greater and greater successes.

Then at different 'success-points' along the way,
And especially when you finally,
Reach the end of your project,
When you are significantly happy,
With what you have accomplished,
Take up your champaigng glass, or glass of wine,
At the end of the day,
Preferrably in the company of someone you deeply care about,
And who deeply cares about you,
And say,

I -- or we -- did what we wanted to do.

-- dgb, undated, approximately 1999, updated, Mar. 26th, 2009.

Excitement, Contact, Withdrawal...From the Gap-DGB Archives...Undated, About 1999

The past is the past.
It cannot be changed.
For better or for worse,
It is, what it is.

We need to work with the cards,
That we were given,
That landed on our table,
And/or that we put there ourselves.

We need to use these cards,
To our best advantage,
Nourish our self-esteem,
Even when those around us,
Have stopped nourishing it,
With us.

The past is the past.
We cannot change last week.
Or yesterday.
Or even what we said and/or did,
Five minutes ago.

We only have the present.
We need to nourish the present.

Not try to build a relationship,
On guilt and resentment.
Or only responsibility and obligation.

No, we need to build our relationship,
On these three things:

Excitement,
Contact,
Withdrawal.

Withdrawal when we need to withdraw.
Withdrawal without guilt.
Trust me, I know this can be hard,
But I will be back, my loved one.

Withdrawal to refocus, regenerate, re-energize...
And come back to the relationship with new vigor.
Renewed passion and excitement.

This is what a relationship should be built on.

Excitement, contact, withdrawal.

Union, separation, and union again.

Let's not ruin the cycle,
By mixing guilt and resentment into it,
And lose our passion in the process.

Excitement, contact, withdrawal,

And start the cycle over agin.

-- dgb, March 26th, 2009.

A DGB Simplified, Internalized 'Hegel's Hotel-Floor Model' of The Structure of The Personality...

A DGB Graphic 'Floor' Model of The Personality: 'Division Of Function and Labour' in The Personality (March 25th, 2009)
........................................................................
This can be viewed as a graphic, simplified version of 'Hegel's Hotel' internalized in the personality -- a '7 Floor' model of the personality -- consisting of 4 basement (unconscious and preconscious) levels and three 'main floor' (conscious) levels.


The Top Main Three Floors....Influences: Freud, Bernes, Perls...

(Parental Ego States): Mezannine Floor: Topdog Management Level


1. Nurturing-Supportive Superego (Gaia/Hera, Jesus Christ, St. Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, Edith Cavell, Mother Teresa)...concerned with support, encouragement...

2. Narcissitic-Dionysian Superego (Narcissus/Dionysus)...concerned with pleasure...

3. Righteous-Critical Superego (Zeus)...concerned with discipline, responsibility, ethics, accountability, correcting mistakes...

.........................................................................

(Adult Ego States) Main Floor Control Level: Supervisory Level



4. Romantic-Creative Ego (Eros/Approdite, Goethe, Woodsworth, Rousseau, Schelling...)..concerned with love, romance, creativity, mystery, surprise, nature, environment, suspense, mystery, art, music, pantheism, deism....

5. Central Mediating-Executive Ego (Zeus, Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Hegel)...concerned with making the final executive decisions in terms of running the personality...

6. Enlightenment Ego (Apollo, Bacon, Locke, Diderot, Paine, Jefferson, Lincoln, Bertrand Russell, General Semantics -- Korzybski, Hayakawa, Ayn Rand...) ...concerned with epistemology, ethics, equality, democracy

7. Economic and Survival Level: (Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Adam Smith, Karl Marx)...concerned with surviving...paying the bills, eating, shelter, clothes, transportation, working, income, business, commerce, economics...

.................................................................................

(Childhood Ego States) Main Floor Underdog Level:

8. Rebellious-Righteous Underdog Ego...concerned with breaking the rules and/or finding better rules...

9. Narcissistic-Dionysian Underdog Ego ....concerned with pleasure...sex...self-interest...

10. Co-operative Underdog Ego (Approval-Seeking/Submissive/Masochistic Ego) ...concerned with agreement, pretending agreement, and/or doing what one is told...subserviance, pleasing...co-operation...

..............................................................................

Basement Levels:


11. 1st Basement: Freud's Floor(Preconscious): Symbolism, Creativity, Art, Dreams, Nightmares, Sublimations, Music, Architecture, Culture....

12. 2nd Basement: Freud's, Adlers', and Perls' Floor: Transference-Lifestyle Complexes, Childhood Memories, Childhood Traumacies, Inferiority and Superiority Complexes, Narcissistic Compensations and Fixations, Identifications, Introjections, Projections, Sublimations....

13. 3rd Basement: Jung's Floor: Archetype figures, mythology, symbolism, Gods, heroes, villains, saints, martyrs, evil doers, Gods in charge of their own area: The Sky (Zeus), The Oceans (Poseidon), The Earth (Gaia), Marriage and Family: (Hera), Truth and Ethics (Apollo), Sensuality, Sexuality, Wine and Celebration (Dionysus), Hell (Satan), Heaven (God, Zeus), Messenger to and from The Underworld (Hermes)....

14. 4th Basement: Jung's Floor: Genetic Self and/or Soul: Includes talents, skills, all that we are capable of being and becoming.

-- dgb, Mar. 25th, 2009.

A DGB Perspective on Freud's Abandonment -- or Partial Abandonment -- of His Traumacy-Seduction Theory Between 1896 and 1899

Under construction...Mar. 25th, 2009

Let us now talk about the possibity of a dialectical bridge beween Freud before and after his short little essay, 'Screen Memories' (1899), the major turning point between his 'pre-psychoanalytic traumatic and seduction theories' and his soon-to-be 'Psychoanalysis-proper' as trumpeted by the publication of his famous book, 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1900). If it was the issue of 'sexuality' that became one of the main dividing points between Freud and Jung, then it is to the issue of sexuality -- and the polarity between 'sexual traumacy' and 'sexual narcissism' -- that we must return.

Much has been made of this controversial theoretical and clinical turning-point in the evolution of Psychoanalysis: many -- particularly feminists knowledgeable with what went down here -- would say that Freud basically abandoned women -- abandoned alleged female victims of childhood sexual assault -- and turned Psychoanalysis into a much more 'chauvanist men's club' that suppressed and distorted all evidence of childhood sexual assaults under the guise of 'childhood and adolescent sexual fantasy' -- most particulary, relative to a girl's love for her father.

I remember running into this issue for the first time when I picked up Masson's controversial book in the mid to late 1980s, 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory' (1984, 1985, 1992). I even remember contacting Mr. Masson in New Zealand by email -- years after he had broken away (and/or been banished) from numerous psychoanalytic societies that he had belonged to (the International Psychoanalytical Association, the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, and I believe, the San Francisico Psychonalytic Society. Cited from another of Masson's books, 'Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst', 1990,1991.)

My first email to Masson was responded to by Masson with reasonable warmth as he wished me good luck in my work but still he did not wish to re-hash the Seduction Theory Controversy. My second email to him was not treated as warmly -- understandable I suppose in light of all the grief he had taken during those years, and/or also my lack of 'sufficient professional' credentials on the same subject manner.

Now here is the point I wish to make. As much as I loved reading 'Final Analysis' and 'The Assault on Truth' and Janet Malcolm's 'In The Freud Archives'(1983,84), and I probably side closer to Masson's last published points of view, and Freud's pre-1897 point of view rather than Freud's evolving post-1897 point of view: still, most memories -- plain and simple -- from an 'objective' epistemological point of view, cannot be fully or often even at all significantly trusted.

Let us just look at the anectdotal evidence we have here. It has been at least 15 years since I last theoretically invested any time and energy into this remarkable controversy, so excuse me if my own memory is a little rusty here: I said that I picked up Masson's book, 'The Assault on Truth' in the mid to late 1980s. Wrong! I just fished the book out of my personal library here, dusted off the cobwebs, and found out that the last publication date on the book was 1992. That means that I obviously bought the book sometime in or after 1992 but I 'remembered' it to be in the mid to late 1980s. So much for my memory.

I read all three of those books that I just cited above but do I remember which book I read when, and in which order, and how far apart the readings were? I am obviously more than a little suspicious of my own memory at this point. Logically speaking, I would imagine I read 'Assault' first, then 'Final Analysis', then Malcolm's 'In the Freud Archives'. But don't quote me on that -- and I certainly would not want to put my hand on a bible in a court of law because if I did, I would probably have to say simply, 'I don't know'. Do I remember what year it was that I emailed Masson in New Zealand. He was working on 'animal psychology', I believe, by that point in time. (Certainly less stressful than 'human psychology' -- especially when it comes to the subject of 'sex' and 'sexuality'.) Maybe one day I will find the email in my own archives here with a date attached to it. But other than that I can only guess that it was somewhere around 1995-97. Again, don't quote me on that because my memory right now is not holding up to the test. It is certainly flawed.

Do I at least partly make my point? A therapist has no right to totally or even necessarily partly trust' the 'objective epistemological correctness' of any memory that a client cites to him or her for the simple reason that it is a 'memory' and memories can easily fail, distort, embellish, discard...in short, they are very narcissistically biased'.

To trust a memory in a court of law -- without substantiating empirical evidence and/or other credible witness reports is downright ludicrous -- putting a man (i.e., it is usually but not always a man who is being accused when it comes to issues of 'past childhood sexual assaults') in jail on the basis of the unsubstantiated memories and testimony of an alleged victim is hugely dangerous and I would even say ethically and legally reprehensible unless these memories and testimony are otherwise substantiated. (And as far as 'narcissistic bias', let us not forget that you have lawyers who are functioning like 'pre-Socratic Sophist mercenaries' who are paid handsomely to deliver fancy rhetoric and persuasive logic that is designed to narcissistically serve their clients goals and wishes regardless of how close or how far their clients' goals and wishes are connected to any form of 'objective, epistemological truth').


We have come full circle and the epistemological and legal dangers that Freud ran into in the mid to late 1890s when he started to have second thoughts, and then abandon, his infamous Seduction Theory, are as real and dangerous today as they were back then. 'Subjective clinical-therapy memories' have no business being called 'epistemological truths' -- regardless of how 'epistemologically real' they may seem. The same point needs to be made with a hundred times more force when we start to talk about an alleged 'unconscious' and/or 'reconstructed' memory. None of these memories should have any legal force in a court of law unless they can be 'empirically substantiated beyond any reasonable doubt' by other much more credible and stronger forms of evidence. And this does not mean a woman's 'psychological/emotional/physical symptoms' or a psychologist's so-called professional testimony.

Psychologists and psychiatrists can be hugely narcissistically biased simply by the orientation of their training. Who's giving the testimony -- an orthodox, Oedipal Complex believing, Psychoanalyst? Or a 21st century feminist psychologist who may have been sexually assaulted herself and who may be projecting her own situation onto her client (in Psychoanalysis this is called 'counter-transference') and 'subconsciously looking' for evidence of a sexual assault in her client in practically every symptom that she portrays, and in every memory, conscious or unconscious, legitimately told to her or 'interpretively reconstructed' by the therapist. This presents a huge 'epistemological and ethical danger' not only to psychotherapy in general -- regardless of psychological orientation, orthodox Psychoanalytic or the opposite -- but even more so once this whole psychological and epistemological charade moves into a court of law.

Do I believe that guilty men should be held accountable for their 'sexual assaults'? Of course, I do -- if they can be legitimately proven in a court of law -- and allowing for the fact that there is a very big difference between 'inappropriately making a pass at a woman' and 'rape'. They should not be treated the same -- and even as I speak there are many men terrified of making a pass at a woman, even having sex with a woman for the first time without the petrifiying thought that she could ruin his life just by 'turning on him' the next morning.

The laws for 'sexual assault' and nowadays 'domestic assault' are getting broader and broader, with less and less 'empirical evidence' needed to get a legal conviction.

In effect, this means that we are now getting more and more of the opposite kind of problem than we used to have. Now, instead of far too many men get away with serious sexual crimes that they should have been convicted of with significant sentences, now we are convicting men and throwing men into jail left, right, and centre, on the basis of laws that are narcissistically biased in favor of women and on the basis of 'narcissistically biased evidence' that would never have been considered 'empirical evidence' back before our domestic and sexual assault laws started to change.

In effect, the Seduction Theory rules again in North American law -- whether we are talking about recent adult or childhood memories -- with or without any kind of 'legitimate supporting empirical and/or witness evidence'. North American domestic law used to be narcissistically biased in favor of men. Now it is narcissisically biased in favor of women.

As if women are incapable of lying, manipulating evidence, embellishing and distorting facts, creating false testimony, making themselves out to be 'victims', noncapable of violence themselves, non-capable of 'instigating trouble', or 'retaliating to rejection' or 'seducing men in their own right'...all of these potential complications to the 'epistemological truth' in both a psychotherapist's office and even more so in a court of law go out the window in today's North American world of 'feminine -- and feminist -- overprotection'.

So how in the name of God or Zeus or Apollo could Freud give any pretense to 'finding epistemological memory truth' in his clinical office in 1895 when in 2007 we are no further ahead -- epistemologically poisoned equally from both sides by an overbelief in both Freud and/or the opposite pro-feminist, anti-Freud point of view on 'memories' and 'unsubtantiated narcissistcally biased, one-sided testimony'. 'Memories' and 'unsubstantiated, narcissistically biased, one-sided testimony and/or theories' need to be thrown out of all courts of law until this whole 'epistemological and ethical mess' is put back into proper balanced perspective.

Right now our domestic courts are making a mockery of the name 'justice'. Both Freud's Seduction Theory and his Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Complex theories were one-sidedly biased but today in our domestic courts of law we are all seeing the evidence of his 'Seduction and Sexual Assault Theories Gone Mad'...

What is it -- something like 70 to 90 percent of all men in jail now are there on 'domestic crimes'. Where are all the women filling up the women's jails? I don't see the same problem in the women's jails these days. What does that mean? Women don't know how to throw a punch? Push a man? Grab a man by the ear? Throw a piece of furniture at a man? Seduce a man -- or consent to being seduced by a man -- and then 'flip' the next day when she has sobred up or things didn't turn out exactly the way she wanted them to? 'Flip' on a man if or when he betrays and/or rejects her -- and concoct an embellished and distorted story to the police and the courts to 'get even'?

The epistemological, ethical, and legal problem that we are facing today -- as originally uncovered at least partly by Freud in the 1890s -- is at least partly this: Is it better to 'have not enough men in jail who have committed sexual and/or domestic assault'? Or is it better to 'throw too many men in jail who are not guilty of the crimes they allegedly committed and/or are being punished for crimes that their accusers were at least equally guilty of -- and who are getting off scott free with no tarnishment to their legal and public reputations.' The man's reputation, credibility, and career are in jeopardy as soon as he is arrested; what compensation does he get if he is found to be innocent two or three year later? He could be out anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000 in legal fees, not to mention the fact that he may have lost his job, and/or hugely significant wages, been evicted from his home for two or three years, alienated from his kids, and then the courts find out that the woman's story has been distorted?

Both men and women commonly distort their stories to protect themselves and/or to make their case seem better in a court of law. But who has the most to lose here?: A man who could go to jail for two or three years? Or a woman who could be found out to be a distorter, an embellisher, and/or a flat out liar -- and walk home without virtually anyone knowing about it?

I've seen this type of thing happen in my mobility-van business; thank God that they are starting to put 'cameras' in their vehicles now -- to not have a camera for a mobility driver's or taxi driver's protection and self-defense right now is a horrible and tragic potential false conviction waiting to happen. I've seen driver's get off an accusation with a camera in the car or van where it could have cost him his career and/or time in jail if there had been no camera.

Why should a democratic law that is supposed to be equal to all citizens, male and female, black and white -- have an overt and/or covert 'threshold of guilt' that is obviously very low when it comes to transgressions committed by a man against a woman, and so high when it comes to transgressions committed by a woman against a man? And that is amongst those transgressions committed by women that even make it to a court of law. Most of them are either not reported, and/or if they are reported, they are not taken seriously by police unless the evidence is overwhelming.

The problem is that we as a society tend to 'overcompensate' when 'social tragedies' happen -- say a man getting out of jail or on probation and coming out and killing a woman. Obviously, we want to protect women to the best of our abiltiy from childhood sexual assault, adult sexual assault, domestic assault, and assault period. But 'legally terrorizing' all adult men on the basis of unsubstantiated, distorted, and/or embellished accusations is not the answer.

Before we used to 'overprotect' the guilt of men.

Now we are overprotecting the guilt of women. Or at least the partial and/or shared guilt. Or women are being basically 'clinically brain-washed' by overpowering Oedipal Therapists or Seduction Therapists Gone Mad.

In this regard, beware of trusting 'narcisisstically biased so-called professional experts'.

Let there be no more Dr. Charles Smiths' -- in medicine, forensics, and/or in clinical psychology. Let's be aware of the very real danger of 'narcissistic and/or theoretical bias the resulting interpretation.

So from a psychotherapeutic and clinical point of view, the problem then becomes this: where do we find a 'workable bridge' between Freud's 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' and his later 'Childhood Sexuality and Oedipal Complex' theories. Or put another way -- between 'Traumacy Theory' and 'Narcissistic (Compensation) Theory'.

I will leave you with this very tough and hugely important theoretical and practical problem for now. And that is my take on Freud for today, March 3rd, 2007, modified on March 5th, 2007, then again freshly modified on Monday January 19th, 2009, and again on March 23rd, 2009.

-- dgb, originally written March 3rd, 2007, latest update, Mar. 23rd-24th, 2009.

-- David Gordon Bain.


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Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction
Author(s): Andreas Kapardis
ISBN10: 052182530X
ISBN13: 9780521825306
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 3/3/2003
Publisher(s): Cambridge University Press

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This book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date discussion of contemporary debates at the interface between psychology and criminal law. The topics surveyed include critiques of eyewitness testimony; the jury; sentencing as a human process; the psychologist as expert witness; persuasion in the courtroom; detecting deception; and psychology and the police. Kapardis draws on sources from Europe, North America and Australia to offer an expert investigation of the subjectivity and human fallibility inherent in our system of justice. He also provides suggestions for minimizing undesirable influences on crucial judicial decision-making. First Edition Hb (1997): 0-521-55321-0 First Edition Pb (1997): 0-521-55738-0

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This book is the authoritative work for students and professionals in psychology and law.